Microfilm Projects in East European Military
Archives

Submitted by GFSJAN@aol.com

A U.S. Government initiative has been quietly opening
new avenues of research. In 1996 the Department of Defense (DoD)
and the Library of Congress (LC) inaugurated a program to
microfilm military records and inventories in former Soviet-bloc
countries focusing primarily on World War II and the early Cold
War years. Expected to continue at least through the year 2000,
the program has so far generated more than 300 reels of
microfilm.

Projects are now underway at three institutions: the Central
Military Archive (Centralne Archiwum Wojskowe) outside Warsaw, the
National Defense Ministry Archives (Archivele Militarie ale
Ministerului Apararii Nationale) in Bucharest, and the Archive for
Military History (Hadtortenelmi Leveltar) in Budapest. The
projects are designed to assist these archives with their records
preservation programs, to make their records more accessible to
scholars in the United States, and to promote closer contacts
between former Cold War adversaries. Alfred Goldberg, Historian in
the Office of the Secretary of Defense, coordinates the program,
with assistance from historians in the military services and the
Office of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. Several
non-governmental specialists render advice and assistance.

Under the terms of formal agreements, DoD provides the
military archives with microfilm cameras on a long-term loan
basis, along with other equipment, film, and supplies. DoD also
pays the cost of processing the microfilm. The archives furnish
the labor to do the filming. Records are selected for filming by
mutual consent. One copy of the processed microfilm is given to
the Library of Congress, where it is available to researchers in
the European Divisions Reading Room in the Jefferson Building. The
archives retain both a positive and negative copy for
themselves.

The program involves the reproduction of records inventories
as well as records themselves. The intention is not only to
facilitate research by American scholars at a centralized location
in the United States, but also to allow them to prepare for and
more knowledgeably plan their visits to the East European military
archives.

Consideration is being given to starting similar projects
with the Slovak Military History Institute in Bratislava and the
Russian Central Naval Archive at Gatchina near St. Petersburg.
Earlier attempts to establish microfilm projects in the Czech
Republic and Bulgaria and with other Russian archives did not
yield results.

The Library of Congress and the Woodrow Wilson Center's Cold
War International History Project (CWIHP) are planning a
conference on the theme, "Early Cold War Military History," with
the presentation of papers utilizing the microfilmed records from
the East European military archives.

Origins of the Program

The microfilm program has its roots in two developments
growing out of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loosening
of its hold over countries in Eastern Europe.

First, the opening of formerly closed Soviet-bloc archives,
for the most part, made available to researchers diplomatic and
Communist party records. Military and intelligence records
remained less accessible.1 In 1991, for example, an
American scholar noted that little was known about records at the
Polish Central Military Archive, which is located in Rembertow
just east of Warsaw. Military documents here, he observed, were
"still considered to be top secret' -- even for the 1940s and
1950s." Researchers were allowed access to the records only by
special permission of the Ministry of Defense, but apparently no
one had yet received such permission.2Thus, the need became apparent to encourage the
opening of military records, not only in Poland, but also
throughout the former Soviet bloc.

Second, the end of the Cold War allowed greatly increased
contacts and communication between Department of Defense
historical offices and their counterparts in Russia and Eastern
Europe. During the late eighties and early nineties a series of
bilateral visits kindled a new spirit of cooperation among them.
3 A key milestone was the April 1990 address to a
standing-room only audience in the Pentagon auditorium by the
former director of the Russian Military History Institute, General
Dmitri A. Volkogonov, about the research and writing of his
biography of Josef Stalin.

Out of this new atmosphere emerged plans by the Office of
the Secretary of Defense to hold a conference in Washington, D.C.,
in March 1994 on the military history and records of the Cold War.
Nearly 140 representatives from 17 countries, including former
Warsaw Pact nations, attended the conference, which was hosted by
the U.S. Army Center of Military History. 4 Military
archivists from Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, and
Hungary presented papers describing their holdings. 5
Participants also discussed a number of ways to continue their
collaboration, including bilateral research visits, publication of
a newsletter on Cold War history, joint publications, and the
microfilming of archival materials. Following the conference a
Department of Defense Cold War Historical Committee, chaired by
John Greenwood of the U.S. Army Center of Military History, was
established to promote the exchange of information between the
historical offices of DoD and various U.S. government agencies and
other countries' official history programs. In August and
September 1994, the committee sponsored the visits to the United
States of 15 military historians and archivists from Poland,
Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, Romania, Germany, France,
the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Canada to conduct
short-term research on Cold War topics. That winter the first
issue of the committee's Cold War History Newsletter was
published. 6

Although several private commercial ventures had been
undertaken to microfilm materials in former Soviet-bloc countries,
a model program existed close at hand within the U.S. Government.
In 1992 the Department of Defense and the Library of Congress had
begun collaborating to microfilm rare books, manuscripts, and
pamphlets in libraries in Moscow and St. Petersburg, 7 and
subsequently in Vilnius.

Building on the experience gained from this program, the DoD
historical offices approached several military archives in 1995
with formal proposals to begin joint microfilm projects.

Polish Central Military
Archive

Since filming began in May 1996, 69 reels -- on selected
topics primarily from the Cold War years -- have been filmed at
the Polish Central Military Archive. 8

They cover such subjects as "Operation Vistula" (the
suppression of underground resistance in the period 1946-48);
General Staff organizational and planning files, directives, and
instructions, 1945-60; and records of the Polish representative on
the Neutral Nation Supervisory Commission and Korean Repatriation
Commission, 1953-54. Some World War II records have also been
microfilmed, including files of General Zygmunt Berling, Commander
of the 1st Polish Army, relating to the 1944 Warsaw
Uprising, and records of the Polish General Staff in London, 2nd
Bureau, on support for the Home Army in Poland. A list of the
contents of the first 55 Polish reels is on LCs website at
lcweb.loc.gov/rr/european/archiwum/archiwum.html.

For 1998-99 agreement has been reached to film (1)
additional World War II records concerning the outbreak of war in
1939 and the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, (2) records relating to
Operation "Dunaj" --the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in
1968, (3) portions of the previously classified 30-volume
(11,000-page) internal history, "Development of the Polish
People's Armed Forces, 1945-1980," written during the mid-1980s,
(4) selected reports of Polish military attaches in Washington,
1945-50, and (5) records relating to the reduction of Polish armed
forces after the Korean War.

Two comments are in order about the Polish records scheduled
for filming. First, while the heavy ideological slant to the
30-volume internal history diminishes its value as a scholarly
work, its numerous footnotes make it an indispensable guide to the
location of important documents in the archive. Second, the
relatively small collection of attache reports held by the Central
Military Archive generally deal with routine meetings and
ceremonial and administrative matters (the main body of
substantive reports are held by another archive), but there are
bits of information in these reports useful to scholars.

The Library of Congress has also received records
inventories from the Polish Central Military Archive. Reels 63 and
64 contain inventories for 15 collections of Cold War records,
including the Office of the Minister of National Defense, 1945-49;
the Finance- Budget Department, 1945-49; the Finance Department,
1950-56; the Organization and Planning Department, 1944-50; and
most of the 2,200-page inventory for the General Staff records,
1945-50. In addition, LC has received duplicate printed copies of
the 1961 Inwentarz Akt Ludowego Wojska Polskiego z lat 1943-45:
Jednostki Bojowe [Inventory of the Records of the Polish
People's Army, 1943-45: Fighting Units] (3 parts, 780
pages).

Finally, the Central Military Archive published in 1996 a
comprehensive guide (154 pages) to its holdings, thought to be the
first such publication issued by a former Soviet-bloc military
archive, entitled Informator o Zasobie [Informational Guide to
the Holdings]. A copy of the informational guide, as well as a
28-page supplement, Zimna Wojna w Wojskowym Zasobie Archiwalnym
[The Cold War in Military Archival Holdings], have been
given to the Library of Congress.

Romanian National Defense Ministry
Archive

Since work began in February 1997, the Romanian National
Defense Ministry Archive has produced 234 microfilm reels. They
focus exclusively on records of military elements connected with
the Romanian Commission for the Terms of the Armistice and the
Peace Treaty, 1942-47. The reels are being catalogued and soon
will be available to researchers. LC intends to post a list of the
contents of the Romanian microfilm on its website.
9

Future microfilming will include selected records of the
information, i.e. intelligence, section of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, 1944-48, and the records of the Superior Directorate of the
Armed Forces, 1945-65. The Library of Congress has received
photocopies of two major inventories: the 90-page inventory to the
fond Marele Stat Major, Sectia 2 -- Informatii (Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Section 2 -- Information), 1944-49, and the 306-page
inventory to the fond Consiliul Politic Superior al Armitei
(Superior Directorate of the Armed Forces), 1945-48.

Hungarian Archive for Military
History

The last of the three archives to begin filming, the Archive
for Military History in Budapest, since August 1997 has filmed 44
reels of records from the Ministry of Defense Central Files for
the year 1949. The 1949 records cover the Ministry of Defense
Secretariat, the Ministry's Chief Directorate for Political
Matters, and the General Staff's Organizational and Mobilization
Section,Directorate for Materiel Planning, and 2nd Directorate.
The Hungarian reels at LC are still being processed and are not
yet open for research. LC also intends to post a list of the
contents of the Hungarian microfilm on its website.

The plan is to continue filming selected portions of files
for the period 1949-56, to be followed by documents and
reminiscences related to the 1956 Revolution (about 9,300 pages)
and the Ministry of Defense's Presidential Directorate register
books for 1945-49 (about 8,300 pages). Time and resources
permitting, records of the Hungarian Royal Chief of Staff and of
the Presidential Section of the Royal Ministry of Defense for the
period 1938-45 will be filmed last.

At present there are no plans to film inventories in the
Hungarian Archive for Military History.

Further information regarding the microfilm from the three
archives can be obtained from LC's European Division specialists:
Ron Bachman (Poland), 202-707-8484, Grant Harris (Romania),
202-707-5859, and Ken Nyirady (Hungary), 202-707-8493.

Since 1987 Ronald D. Landa has been a member of the
Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense. From 1973
to 1987 he worked as a historian at the Department of State, where
he was one of the editors of the documentary series, Foreign
Relations of the United States.

FOOTNOTES

1 Regarding the holdings of the Slovak
Military Historical Archive at Trnava, which administratively is
under the Military History Institute, see Pavel Vimmer, "Miesto a
hlavne ulohy VHA v systeme vojenskeho archivnictva" [The Place
and Main Tasks of the VHA (Military Historical Archive) in the
Slovak Military Archival Structure], Vojenska Historia, vol.
1, no. 2 (1997), pp. 74-81. A short description of the Russian
Central Naval Archive is in Patricia Kennedy Grimsted et al, eds.,
Archives in Russia, 1993: A Brief Directory (Washington, DC:
International Research & Exchanges Board, 1992), p. C-5.

2 P. J. Simmons, "Report from Eastern
Europe," Cold War International History Project [CWIHP]
Bulletin, no. 1 (Spring 1992), p. 12. The article is condensed
from Simmons longer paper, "Archival Research on the Cold War Era:
A Report from Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw," CWIHP Working Paper
No. 2, May 1992.

4 See Judith Bellafaire, "The Cold War
Military Records and History Conference," Army History, no. 31
(Summer 1994), p. 36. An account of the conference by a Slovak
participant, Miloslav Pucik, is in his "The Cold War International
History Projekt," Vojenska Historia, vol. I, no. 1 (1997), pp.
142-44.

5 For the papers presented at the
conference, see William W. Epley, ed., International Cold War
Military Records and History: Proceedings of the International
Conference on Cold War Military Records and History Held in
Washington, D.C., 21-26 March 1994 (Washington, D.C.: Office of
the Secretary of Defense, 1996). Papers that describe former
Soviet-bloc archives and their holdings include V. V. Mukhin, "The
Military Archives of Russia," pp. 185-92; N. P. Brilev, "The
Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian
Federation," pp. 193-202; Vladimir Pilat, "Cold War Military
Records in Czech Military Archives and Possibilities of Their
Study," 213-17; Adam Marcinkowski and Andrzej Bartnik, "Polish
Military Records of the Cold War: Organization, Collections, Use,
and Assessment," pp. 219-31; Andras Horvath, "The System of
Distrust: The Top Secret Document Management System in the
Hungarian People's Army, 1949-1956," pp. 233-45; and Alexandru
Osca, "The Romanian Military Archives: An Important Source for the
Detailed Study of the Cold War," pp. 247-54. The U.S. Army Center
of Military History is considering placing the conference
proceedings on its website at http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg.

6 U.S. Department of Defense Cold War
Historical Committee Cold War History Newsletter, vol. 1, no. 1
(January 1995). A description of the program that brought the 15
researchers to the United States in the summer of 1994 is on pp.
2-3.

8 A brief description of the Polish project
and the 20 May 1996 inaugural ceremony held at the Central
Military Archive, attended by U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Rey, is in
Zdzislaw G. Kowalski, "Wspolpraca archiwistow wojskowych
[Cooperation of Military Archivists]," Polska Zbrojna, 18
June 1996.

9 Working as a volunteer for the Library of
Congress, a retired Foreign Service officer, Ernest Latham,
prepared a detailed finding aid to the first 96 reels of Romanian
microfilm. See Donna Urschel, "Romanian Specialist Creates Finding
Aid in English," Library of Congress Gazette, vol. 9, no. 18
(8May 1998), p. 10.